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Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous
File:Inside Landmark Forum 2 of 6.jpg"Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus", 2004
Directed by	Karima Tabti
Written by	Pièces à Conviction (Incriminating Evidence) (French news program)
Produced by	France 3, Elise Lucet, Herve Brusini
Starring	Elise Lucet, Host/Moderator; Laurent Richard, France 3 undercover investigative journalist; Alain Roth, Landmark Education head, France; Sophie McLean, Landmark Education spokeswoman and Landmark Forum Leader; Jean-Pierre Jougla, Attorney; Jean-Marie Abgrall, Psychiatrist, author of Mechanics of the Sects; Jean-Pierre Brard, Deputy Mayor, Montreuil, France; Christian Lujan, Social psychologist, Psychoanalyst; Jocelyne Berthelot, Landmark Education volunteer; Mona Vasquez, former Scientology member; Laurent Mournais, former participant; Brigitte Thelier, former participant; Pierre, anonymous former participant; Thomas Lardeur, consultant; Arnaud Palisson, intelligence officer and author of A Major Enquiry on Scientology
Edited by	Pascal Richard, Lionel de Coninck Emmanuel Charrieras
Distributed by	France 3
Release date	24 May 2004
Running time	65 minutes
Country	France
Language	French

Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous (Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus) is a French television-documentary. It presented an investigation of the activities of Landmark Education. The investigative journalism program Pièces à Conviction started filming the documentary in 2003, and the channel France 3 broadcast it in France on 24 May 2004.

Response and commentary

Allegations concerning fine

A statement released in French by Landmark Education hints that France 3 preferred to risk a "tiny" fine for a violation of the media's code of ethics rather than present a documentary more favorable to Landmark Education.

Landmark Education's reply

Under French law, when journalists or the media mention or allude to an entity, that entity has a legal right of reply, and the media must publish that reply. Landmark Education's response started by thanking France 3 for publishing the response without adding extensive sound-effects as it did in the broadcast. Landmark Education denied some of the points made in the documentary. (France 3 subsequently cancelled a scheduled rebroadcast and (according to Landmark Education) removed a transcript from its web-site. Note that the France 3 website in 2004 generally held copies, but not transcripts, of Pièces à Conviction broadcasts.)

In Landmark Education's legal right-of-reply to France 3's documentary, a woman, after having seen the broadcast, complained: "My face is hidden, but my voice is not masked. I feel betrayed by this journalist who did not respect the necessary confidentiality in this broadcast." She went on to express her dismay at the manner in which the broadcast showed only a part of her conversation. Though she characterized the conversation itself as "difficult", she maintained that it enabled her to "live better" and to have a better relationship with her daughter.

Landmark Education responded to France 3's insinuation that Landmark Education gained large sums of money by using volunteers in France. It stated that Landmark Education lost money each year in France, but maintained its center open for its participants. France 3 estimated that the receipts of Landmark Education amounted to nearly 1.5 million euros per annum, whereas, according to Landmark Education's assertions, they did not exceed 590,000 euros per annum.

Landmark Education commented on Dr. Jean Marie Abgrall's position in its reply, stating that Dr. Abgrall had declared that, with regard to the ten elements identified by the Parliamentary Commission about Cults in France, only four "minor characteristics" applied to Landmark Education, but that "None of the six relative major elements of a cult applies to Landmark Education".

Art Schreiber, the General Counsel and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Landmark Education, commented on the France 3 broadcast in Landmark Education's subpoena to Google in 2006. He stated that "the apparent purpose of the report was to portray Landmark Education as a harmful cult." Schreiber went on to assert that the program contained inaccurate, biased statements as well as serious unfounded accusations. He accused France 3 of operating unprofessionally, and "using tactics including lying, manipulating, using illegally obtained materials, and intentionally presenting materials out of context." He claimed that France 3 had used unauthorized confidential footage of the Landmark Forum, shot by an undercover reporter attending the course under a false name. He stated that after the broadcast of the documentary in France, "Landmark's attorney in France sent a detailed letter to TV3 in which he refuted, point by point, the gross inaccuracies and defamatory and libelous representations in their program." Schreiber claimed that after receiving the letter, France 3 removed a transcript of the broadcast from their web site.

In its reply, Landmark Education also quoted a 1995 letter from Dr. Raymond Fowler, past President of the American Psychological Association, which reflected his personal opinion. The Fowler letter stated that: "In my opinion, the Landmark Forum is not a cult or anything like a cult, and I do not see how any reasonable, responsible person could say that it is." Fowler went on to provide lack of evidence, stating that he did not directly witness anything in his experience of the Landmark Forum course that could be harmful to the course participants. Fowler expressed the belief that if the French government were to "look at the question more closely", they would conclude that Landmark Education appeared on the list of cults in error.

Commentary from Pièces à Conviction personnel

Pascal Richard, Editor-in-Chief of Pieces a conviction drew attention to the special circumstances of this documentary in a note on the show's official web-page. Richard described the program as a "difficult broadcast", which utilized the "modern tools of television". He went on to state that only through the use of hidden cameras and microphones could the producers "go the extra mile and deliver the facts". Richard stated that only by using these techniques could the journalists get past the "slick facade" projected by "this unusual group", as well as the statements which had been "carefully prepared and organized by a New-York communications firm".

(The France 3 web-site continued to make these comments available on the web until at least the time of the archiving of the version dated 13 July 2004. By 10 October 2004 the monthly program's web-page had moved on in the normal manner of operation — to featuring more recent episodes of Pièces à Conviction.)

Repercussions

In France, Landmark Education "assistants" (participants in the Landmark Education Assisting Program) had the apparent French legal status of volunteer unpaid workers. In June 2004, a month after the Pièces à Conviction program aired, a French government agency (L’Inspection du Travail, "Labour Inspection") investigated labor practices regarding these volunteer workers, and sent a report to the government.

According to a report published by the Nouvel Observateur, on July 2004, Landmark Forum graduates arrived at the offices to find the doors locked. The French branch of Landmark Education had officially shut down. Semi-officially, the Landmark staff moved their operation to London and continued to recruit in France. As of May 2005, persons involved in the organization in France continued to communicate with each other via the Internet. Graduates met together and acknowledged that they felt they had lost a "family", and expressed deep regrets that they could no longer continue "to bring transformation to people".

Report of the 1995 French Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Cults

The documentary refers to the 1995 report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Cults {Rapport fait au nom de la Commission d'enquête sur les sectes) which listed Landmark Education (Landmark education international - Le forum") as a secte (cult).

Coincidentally, on 27 May 2005 — a year after France 3 broadcast the documentary and many months after Landmark Education's operations in France had diminished to unofficial groups keeping in touch via the Internet — the then Prime Minister of France Jean-Pierre Raffarin issued a circulaire on the ongoing fight against cults in France. The circulaire suggests that the list of specific cults appended to the report of the 1995 Parliamentary Commission 1995 had become less pertinent — because of the way in which organizations had changed and morphed and come to use the Internet — and suggested that in certain cases his civil servants should avoid depending on generic lists of groups.

The documentary on the Internet

From September 2006 onwards, anonymous posters sent copies of the documentary — including versions with English-language subtitles — to several video-sharing web-sites and bitTorrent sites.

In October 2006 Landmark Education issued subpoenas pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a piece of United States legislation which allows content-owners to issue subpoenas to identify alleged infringers — even without filing a lawsuit. Landmark Education sent subpoenas to Google Video, YouTube and the Internet Archive, demanding details of the identity of the person(s) who had uploaded copies (with English-language subtitles) to these websites.

Challenges to Landmark Education's efforts arose on multiple fronts. The Internet Archive commenced fighting its subpoena from Landmark Education, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed official objections on its behalf. The EFF (operating on behalf of the anonymous entity who uploaded the video) also planned to file a motion to quash Landmark's DMCA subpoena to Google Video. Google advised Landmark that it would not produce the requested information pending a ruling on that motion. YouTube sent notification to the user about its subpoena, and planned to give the user a reasonable opportunity to move to quash it.

Art Schreiber, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Landmark Education, commented on the issue, raising issues of intellectual property (IP) in RedHerring Magazine in an article dated 2006-11-03. Schreiber affirmed that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had released a statement characterizing Landmark Education's copyright claims to the documentary as "bogus". He went on to portray the claim of the Electronic Frontier Foundation as "entirely inaccurate".

On 8 November 2006 the Electronic Frontier Foundation posted a Draft Motion to Quash Landmark Subpoena on their website. Independent filmmaker Enric Cirne interviewed a representative from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on Landmark Education's usage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Cirne also interviewed another staff attorney on-camera about the Electronic Frontier Foundation's actions regarding the issuing of the DMCA subpoenas.

On 9 November 2006 the Electronic Frontier Foundation responded to Art Schreiber's commentary and raised the issue of fair use in a post entitled "EFF and Landmark: Cards on the Table". In their statement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that any use of alleged material — even if it were copyrighted — occurred "for purposes of criticism and commentary" and constituted a "non-infringing fair use". The Electronic Frontier Foundation asserted that Landmark's copyright claim remained "bogus".

On 10 November 2006, the Reuters newsservice published an article about the dispute.The Washington Post and many other news sources subsequently disseminated this article.

The Cult Awareness Information Centre (Australia: http://www.caic.org.au/ ) has made a non-official copy of the video available in flash video format. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has cited this location, as has an article about Landmark Education on the "Yad L'Achim website, InformationWeek and Yahoo! News.

On 17 November 2006, the Apologetics Index website received a "cease and desist" letter from attorneys in Amsterdam representing Landmark Education. The letter stated that Landmark Education demanded Apologetics Index remove their hyperlink to the Cult Awareness Information Centre's streaming video version of the documentary, due to alleged "copyright infringement" of their "Landmark Forum Leaders Manual" (TXu 1-120-461). The Apologetics Index responded on their site that after reading the responses from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they did not intend to comply with Landmark's demands. Further information on this matter appears on the Apologetics page devoted to Landmark Education.

Within the same period of time, Landmark Education also sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal action to the Internet service provider of the Cult Awareness and Information Center website, "StudioSolutions", in Australia. Landmark again used the argument of alleged copyright infringement of material from their "Landmark Forum Leader's Manual".

The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a statement in a post on their website regarding Landmark Education's legal letters in Amsterdam and Australia, entitled: "Landmark Forum's Internet Censorship Campaign Goes Down Under". The post includes a request to Landmark's General Counsel Art Schreiber, utilizing some Landmark Education jargon (take a stand, racket, winning formula):

In public statements, Landmark General Counsel Art Schreiber insists that Landmark supports free speech. We urge Landmark to take a stand for the principles of free expression and get out of the censorship racket—the answer to criticism is to explain and promote your own view. Landmark may believe that using copyright notices to takedown criticism is a winning formula, but it will ultimately come back to haunt Landmark.

In an agreement reached on 30 November 2006, Landmark Education withdrew their subpoenas against Internet Archive and the anonymous poster to Google Video. The settlement included the acknowledgment that the poster of the video will not repost it to the Internet "in whole or in part."

The Centre d'Information et de Conseil des Nouvelles Spiritualités (CICNS), a French association for the defense of religious freedom and conscience, criticized the documentary for its lack of contradictory debate, stating that the program is "an undertaking of destruction of Landmark Education".

See also

• About-Picard law
• The Century of the Self, episode part 3 of 4
• Human Potential Movement
• Investigative journalism
• MIVILUDES
• Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France
• Status of religious freedom in France

References and footnotes

1. Malheureusement, considérant que les amendes à payer sont minimes pour une violation du code de déontologie des médias, France 3 a décidé qu'il valait mieux pour son taux d'audimat payer ces amendes symboliques plutôt qu'offrir au public le reportage juste et objectif qu'il était en droit d'attendre.
   Translation:
   "Unfortunately, seeing how minimal the fines are for a breach of the media Code of Practice, France 3 determined it better for its audience share statistics to pay this symbolic fine rather than to offer the public the fair and objective reporting which it had the right to expect."
   Unattributed statement published on Landmark Education's French web-site at http://www.landmarkeducation.fr/menu.jsp?top=20447&siteObjectID=21551
2. http://www.mediawise.org.uk/files/uploaded/Right%20of%20reply%20in%20Europe.pdf
3. ^ Landmark Education's legal right of reply, translated
4. Subpoena to Google, Art Schreiber, October 2006
5. English Letter, 1995, Landmark Education website, Document number "L-014E".
6. Archived version of the Pieces a conviction web-page of 6 June 2004
   C'est une émission difficile qui n'a pas l'écriture habituelle de Pièces à Conviction. Nous avons pris ici le parti de nous servir des outils de TV modernes, comme ces caméras et ces micros dissimulés. C'était, en effet, notre seul moyen d'aller au-delà et de livrer l'info. Le seul moyen aussi de capter une autre réalité que la façade lisse qu'aimerait montrer cette étrange société. Et d'aller au-delà des discours soigneusement préparés et organisés par une société de communication new-yorkaise.
7. Cite error: The named reference Nouvel was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
8. A short timeline in French.
9. Circulaire du 27 mai 2005 relative à la lutte contre les dérives sectaires
10. Self-Help Group Backs Off Attack on Internet Critic, Electronic Frontier Foundation, November 30, 2006.
11. Landmark and the Internet Archive. Landmark's Letter to the Internet Archive. Landmark's Letter to Google. Internet Archive's Objections to Landmark Subpoena.
12. Landmark Education Fires Back At EFF, Redherring.com
    “The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) challenged our actions and alleged to the press that our copyright claims were bogus, which statement was then disseminated on the Internet. Landmark Education’s goal is not to silence anyone, but to protect its core IP resources, which were infringed by the video. While we appreciate the work of the EFF, the allegation that our copyright claim is bogus is entirely inaccurate. The facts are clear that the Landmark Forum program has for many years been copyrighted. Materials covered by this copyright registration were included throughout the video.”
13. Landmark and the Internet Archive
14. Video Interview with Electronic Frontier Foundation, Enric Cirne, 8 November 2006, Tech Alley.
15. Second Video Interview with Electronic Frontier Foundation, Enric Cirne, November, 2006, Tech Alley.
16. "EFF and Landmark: Cards on the Table", Electronic Frontier Foundation, 9 November 2006
    "While we appreciate the kind words, we disagree with Mr. Schreiber's copyright analysis. To the extent that the documentary includes any materials copyrighted by Landmark, that use is clearly for purposes of criticism and commentary, i.e., a non-infringing fair use. Yesterday we released a draft of our motion to quash, which explains in detail (see pages 11-16) why Landmark's copyright claim does not hold water. Indeed, it's not even a close call. Sorry, Landmark, but your claim is still bogus."
17. "Google faces legal challenges over video service"
18. Landmark and the Internet Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation, case page, Landmark's Misuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
19. Landmark Education piece (Hebrew), About Yad L'Achim (English), 2006.
20. Landmark Drops Copyright Infringement Subpoenas On Google And Anonymous Critic, InformationWeek, 1 December 2006
21. TechWeb article, Yahoo! News, 1 December 2006.
22. Landmark Education vs. a link on Apologetics Index, Religion News Blog, Netherlands, November 17, 2006, Anton and Janet Hein-Hudson
23. "Cease and desist" letter, Landmark Education, to StudioSolutions, concerning Cult Awareness and Information Centre, 13 November 2006.
24. Landmark Forum's Internet Censorship Campaign Goes Down Under, Electronic Frontier Foundation, 17 November 2006.
25. Self-Help Group Backs Off Attack on Internet Critic, Electronic Frontier Foundation, November 30, 2006.
    "In a settlement reached Tuesday, Landmark agreed to withdraw the subpoena to Google and end its quest to pierce the anonymity of the video's poster. Landmark has also withdrawn its subpoena to the Internet Archive. EFF represents both the anonymous critic and the Internet Archive."
26. Settlement agreement
    " from Google and all other internet sites upon which he/she/it posted the video, and further agrees not to re-post the Video in any form on Google or any other internet site in whole or in part."
27. CICNS. "Émission "pièces à conviction du Lundi 24 mai 2004 su France 3 : Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous"" (in French). Sectes-infos. Retrieved 23 August 2009. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

External links

• Landmark and the Internet Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Draft Motion to Quash Landmark Subpoena, 8 November 2006
• Cults in France, Recorded with the Presidency of the National Assembly on 22 December 1995, Mr. Alain Gest, Reporter, Mr. Jacques Guyard, Deputies. National Assembly, Tenth Legislature.
• Réponse officielle à France 3, Landmark Education's response to the France 3 documentary.
• Presentation of International Landmark Education, Interdepartmental Mission of Vigilance and Fight Against Sectarian Drifts, (translated)

Media/Press

• Google faces legal challenges over video service, The Washington Post, 10 November 2006
• Landmark Forum Violates Constitution and Federal Law by Trying to Chill Speech, PressZoom, 1 November 2006
• Landmark Ed, EFF, negotiations, p2pnet.net News, 10 November 2006
• Video interview with Kurt Opsahl, interview with Attorney for Electronic Frontier Foundation, regarding Landmark's DMCA Subpoenas, November 2006
• Landmark Education Fires Back At EFF, Redherring.com
• YouTube Copyright row, Warez.com News, 14 November 2006
• Landmark Drops Copyright Infringement Subpoenas On Google And Anonymous Critic, InformationWeek, December 1, 2006.
• "At home with the gurus in neckties", Nouvel Observateur, French newspaper, 19 May 2005, by Marie Lemonnier.

• Documentary television films
• Investigative journalism
• Human Potential Movement
• Personal development television series
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown incidents
• French documentary television series